I have a website, targeted to my local community, that seems to bounce between page one and page 5 for no apparent reason. According to Yahoo Site Explorer my competitors are not adding links and my links are growing. I have less content than the competitors but that is growing as well. I have seen the very same thing happen with another site, it bounced between pages 1 and 5 for a few weeks and then seemed to settle on page 4. Any ideas or speculations on what is causing this? As I am primarily using directories for back links right now I can’t help but think that quality of links is part of the problem. Has anyone else seen this? Any thoughts?
You have already given answer to your own question. The problem is with the quality of back links you are creating. Once you create few links Google put you on top but once its starts evaluation of the links, it send you back to the position your website deserve. In backlinks, you can not compete with your competitors on the sole basis of numbers, but you must focus on the quality of the backlinks as well.
Yes, that's a given, but I think what I should have said is that Google appears to be placing more emphasis on the quality of back links than previously.
It seems that the days of a link is a link are over and I can't help but wonder if some links that previously would not have hurt, and might even have helped, will now do more harm than good.